Painting about love, nature and beauty by Ali Mabuha (Ali Rahamad)

“I paint, and I paint and I paint, and the paint is me, dancing in the space with different melodies. The journey hold us together, we are not apart.
Sometimes I ask myself: What would the world be without a song, without music? Without color?… And the night without a dream, the day without distances, a country without culture, love without feeling… the object without form?
From road to road, my footsteps knock in every door: I see different faces, sometimes no words, sometimes a smile, sometimes tears, fears. In every one of them I find a part of me.
I feel like a channel, with my brush in empty canvas.
I left my home country during the 70s with an unknown direction to experience what the world out there had to offer me. I went around the world, and after visiting 30 countries I settled in Munich. Germany gave me a sense of world art and allowed me to establish myself as a professional artist with universal concerns. From 1976 to 1989 in Germany, I expressed my travel experiences and personal struggles through surrealism.
Then, in the United States during the 1990s, I embarked on a 15 year journey exploring war – from Iraq to Kosovo, Rwanda, Congo, Niger, ending with Abu Graib. This series expressed my despair over senseless acts of war through a more visceral and expressionistic form.
After all that blood in my paint, my hands, my food, and my dreams, I had to stop…
I now want to talk about the love we have forgotten exists. So I am currently painting about love, nature, and beauty; like the Woman and the Violin. I also feel a longing for my country, and as I remember my childhood around the Gunong Ledang Mountain, I have started a series called Puteri Gunong Ledang, evoking all the legends and memories of jungle fairies that still live in my mind.”